Hey everyone, it’s me again with yet more questions! lol
I’m about to build a shorty Solarforce L2M with their new knurled L2T head that has a slimline SS bezel. The build part? I’m making the pill from scratch. The plan is to put an XP-G2 R5 2B on a Noctigon, then mount those onto a heat-sink of 6061 aluminum much like I did with copper in the K3. I have a bar of 1” 6061 that I’ll turn down to fit snugly into the L2M shorty body, recess the back end for the driver and use Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive to secure the Noctigon to the sink. I have Carclo TIR optics that promise an 8.2º beam angle with the XP-G2 emitter.
How hard to push the emitter? I have Q-Lites on the way at 3.04A. Is that too much at some 800 emitter lumens? Should I pull a chip and go with that? This will be a small pocket rocket with hopefully some throw. I’ve already bumped the output on a VinhNguyen P-60 XM-L2 5000K to 3.57A in one and it puts light out at 100 yds, very nice in a tiny package! I’ll be using an Efest IMR18350 cell to run it.
Opinions? Ideas?
I’ve also just learned that I can anodize aluminum. Since the L2M is not Type III I’m thinking about stripping it and redoing it with a color. What color for a potent pocket rocket? Purple? Blue? Red? Sunset orange? A combination of Red, White (silver) and Blue? (Red head, silver body, blue tailcap) Give me a break, this will be my third anodizing experience if I decide to go this route, I haven’t learned to mask, unless someone has ideas or experience on that as well?
Notice that with an emitter on copper you get away with the housing getting much hotter (it follows directly from the faster heat path between the housing and the emitter: faster equilibrium, so less temperature difference, so with a hotter housing the emitter is still not overheating). For me that is the main reason for using copper boards: being able to make small hotrods.
Bottomline: I am confident you will be ok with 3.04A , even with a flashlight as badly heatsinked as a p60-host.
djozz, it won’t be badly heatsinked, it will have more aluminum under the emitter than the entire host has in it’s make-up combined! Or pretty close to that anyway. A 29/32” wide x 1” long aluminum heat-sink under the copper pcb. That should pretty much handle the heat.
That is an impressive piece of metal :-) , that can suck up quite some heat, I guess the heat path to the flashlight shell has also received some extra attention? The reason I am curious is that I have one p60 host that I do not use a lot and I would not mind some new ideas for it.
It is my intention, using the Carclo TIR optics, to shape the top end of the ~1” tall aluminum light engine to house the optic. I will cut an area at the bottom of this “cone” to hold the Noctigon pcb cut down to approx. 10mm with the XP-G2 on board. This will give the host full contact with the light engine for the entire ~1” of provided area for the pill in the top of the L2 series light. Perhaps I have bitten off a big enough chunk to choke me, we’ll see.
I had originally thought to make this “inverse cone” the actual reflector, but realized with my limited tools I would not be likely to get it nearly perfect enough for a good beam pattern. So I searched out the Carclo optic (actually would have preferred the Ledil but it’s new and I don’t care to buy 77 at a time at this point)
A lathe would make this so much easier! But as I don’t even have a decent drill press, this will definitely be a challenge!
I may have to rethink this and make it a mule, with the light engine being the solid piece and a shallow highly polished aluminum inverse cone being the “reflector”. I do have another piece of copper like that one shown above, might just have to use it and put an de-domed XM-L2 to work at 4.2A or so, with the mule idea prevailing.
As usual, I’ve jumped into a bigger mess than I had originally thought. lol
oh no, I never meant to discourage you (or anyone) from doing nice new things (that I don't have the time/tools/skills/perseverance for ;-) ), please proceed!!
When I did the K3 it was a different set-up, with the large head housing a reflector and base for the pcb that sat on top of the host, with the driver being in a tower that dipped down into the host. I simply cut that tower portion off and replaced it with the large piece of copper, letting the reflector and it’s threaded on base sit on top of the host as before, with the copper light engine protruding up through a 7/8” hole I cut where the Solarforce pcb once sat.
I was still thinking along those lines, which simply won’t work for this short body version from Solarforce. So now that I have been awakened, I see what it will take and see a couple of different approaches. I will try the optic, if it defeats me I’ll step back to the mule. One way or another I will have a high powered little pocket rocket! lol
Or should I say, another one…the first one is running some 1300 lumens and works just great!
I was aiming to get the brunt of the work done using my benchtop drill press. Big mistake! I did take my piece of 1” diameter aluminum down to the machine shop and they bored a true center hole and cut threads, the guy was really nice and didn’t charge me anything!
My drill press won’t do it. The piece wobbles at the lowest speed my press will go. So I’m going to have to do the work with my cordless drill and dremel tool, again. Bummer.
I did manage to re-flow 2 XP-G2 R5 2B emitters to Noctigon boards and do some testing with the Carclo TIR. I’m not sure I like the beam it provides. Certainly not the 8.2º they brag up in their product listing. Here’s a shot at the ceiling, 1’ square white Styrofoam ceiling tile from approx. 9’
Don’t really care for the shades within the beam, or the rings on the outer portion that really aren’t visible here. Think I might just carefully cut the reflector inside the pill and polish the heck out of it. Almost messed up, wired up a driver that I’d modified for the K3 running 2 cells, had 16 chips on board! The XP-G2 took it, but had the holder for the optic smoking within seconds! I had the Noctigon pressed against a 3x3x3 cube of 6061, but I must’ve allowed it to pull away for a moment. Ended up pulling 7 chips off the board and ran it that way for the beamshot above.
I’ve heard everyone talk about wrapping the P-60 pill with aluminum foil or copper sheet to ensure optimum contact with the head, but does anyone wrap the host below the O-ring? That’s where the emitter is, and the screw on head is not touching the host at that point! Because the head has to clear the o-ring, there’s a space there that can be bridged with a quarter-inch strip of coke can or copper foil, whatever. Seems to me to be one of the most important places to get the thermal path directing heat to outside ambient air.
what carclo optic are you using - 20 or 28mm? I was never much impressed with the 20mm Carclo I tried (10003?), but I thought that the 28mm one was ok. Quite throwy compared to my variety of 20mm optics, but not a super pleasant beam.
It’s always a bit of a suck it and see thing with optics. I’ve tried most of the 20mm ones and I like the 10deg XM-L optics from LED-DNA (also probably from FT too) the most and they’re supposed to work really well with XP-G too. I think I have a spare (possibly), I can send it to you to try if you want. I don’t have much experience with the larger optics, though you can check out the beamshot thread on MTBR for some ideas. I know that the Ledil Iris is supposed to be really nice, might be worth checking out.
The Carclo 10048 is an 26.5mm optic, supposed to be 8.6 degree with XP-G, 8.2 degree with XP-G2. But it’s got some odd sickly shading in the middle and an area between spot and corona. Across a 20’ room the hot spot is about 2 1/2’ in diameter, so not a real tight beam by any means. You can left click on that beamshot pic and open it up in Flickr, look at it in original size and you’ll see what I’m saying.
The new Ledil isn’t commonly available yet, can only be purchased (from what I can find) in bulk at 77 or 380 quantities.
Thanks for the offer Matt, but I’ll probably be doing something else.
The Khatod looks pretty good, might try it. The Ledil Emily is the optic of choice, but the only place I can find it has it in multiples of 77. What the H would I do with 76 spare TIR optics? lol, as if I have that kind of cash sitting around ready to throw away at a 77:1 need ratio.
I was hoping the wider optic might give me better throw, could go down to whatever size comes in the best beam or I could use a reflector. But making my own still seems the thing to do as it now seems next to impossible, which makes me want to do it that much more! I’m very stubborn, I admit it.
well, if you end up ordering one I’d be happy to split the postage with you and get a couple. I’m always looking around for new optics to try The 77 min order for the Emily is at Digikey? I agree, I’d find 76 spares a bit too much.
You’re going to struggle getting more throw than a reflector using an optic, even a large one. Reflectors are just that much more efficient at throw for any given size. I use optics because I prefer the beam pattern and because you can get a lot more different patterns (flood, spot, narrow flood, elliptical etc) than you can with a reflector.
My personal faves in 20mm format:
Laura RS (square, but can be filled round) for throw - must space optic if using without holder
LED-DNA for flood+throw - very efficient optic, cheap too I’ve used a bunch of them with XM-Ls, they’re supposed to be more spotty with XP-G
LXP-RS for narrow flood. It’s hard to describe this one, it’s basically a narrow flood (no hotspot) or wide spot. I like it alot.
I found the Ledil Tina2 D to be very much to my liking, atop an XP-G2 R5 2B emitter in this custom one-off AAA MiniMag conversion by Rufusbduck. 261 lumens out the front as measured by TexasPyro, the custom built driver is making 1.1A off an Efest IMR10440 cell. Just Love this light!
My .50 BMG uses the Ledil Tina2 S but the beam isn’t quite as nice.
I’ll see if I can contact Mouser and perhaps get 5 of the Ledil EmilyD Ledil EmilyD
